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Volume 4, Number 2 (Fall 1998) Andre Gunder Frank. ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xxix + 416 pp. ISBN 0520214749, $15.95 (paper). Reviewed by Kees Terlouw, This review also appears in the TESG Journal of Economic and Social Geography. Copyright © the Royal Dutch Geographical Society. We got it all wrong. Every social scientist frequently has that sneaking feeling that perhaps the world is not constructed as he or she thought it was. Most of us then have a drink and a good night's sleep, go back to the university the next day, and keep on teaching along the well-trodden path of our predecessors. If we are wrong, we are at least in well-respected company. But Andre Gunder Frank is not like the rest of us. This maverick of many decades has now written a book in which his iconoclasm reaches a new climax. That Samuel Huntington and Walt Rostow got it wrong won't surprise the reader familiar with Frank's earlier work on dependence and the development of underdevelopment. But Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Werner Sombart, Max Weber, Arnold Toynbee, William McNeill, Fernand Braudel, and even Immanuel Wallerstein are now added to that list. Andre Gunder Frank also sees fatal errors in his previous work on dependency theory. All these godfathers of social development study are guilty of Eurocentrism. They all look for explanations for the rise of (Western) Europe after the Middle Ages against a background of stagnating Asian societies. All these assumptions are wrong according to Frank. In that period Europe did not rise compared to Asia. On the contrary, Europe only ascended in the 19th century due to a (temporary) decline in Asia. Frank interprets this as one of the many seesaw-like centuries long swings of rise and decline within a millennia-old world-system. Not Europe (which after all was only a minor part of the world-system) but this world-system should be the start of our understanding of social development. This is, according to Frank, the unity in the diversity. The original sin of social historians and theorists is that they start at the wrong place. Like the proverbial drunk they look for their keys only under the lamp post. The further away from Europe, the less data are available for the social scientist. Because unknown is not unimportant, Frank visits some oases in this Oriental data desert. Although in his opinion the world-system is much older and consists not only of economic relations, Frank "limits" his analyses to the global economy between 1400 and 1800. He discusses global trade, the flow of silver from America to Asia, the comparative productive strength of Europe and Asia, and the theoretical implications of all his findings. Frank studies global trade by describing some of the trade going on in different macro-regions in the world (The Americas, Africa, West Asia, the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, and the rest of Asia). Frank assembles the jigsaw puzzle of the global economy by starting at the edges, but these pieces don't belong together. There was trade going on within those macro-regions. Frank gives some anecdotical evidence for that, although he does not make solid comparisons, and we have to place a lot of trust on Frank's judgments on the facts. But the trade between these regions is neglected. Frank's heap of anecdotical evidence of early regional trade camouflages the virtual absence of world trade. Only the trade in silver, porcelain, and silk had a global reach, hardly the foundation for a substantial world-system. Frank's arguments about trade have another important flaw. The lavish descriptions of trade practices say little about their importance for the local economies, which is essential for the existence of a meaningful world-system. For instance, on page 97 Frank underpins the importance of trade within Southeast Asia in particular and global trade in general by listing some large trade-dependent cities in Southeast Asia. But long distance trade is only one basis for sustaining an urban population. Market towns and administrative centres dependent on the agricultural supplies of their immediate hinterland can also be very large. Large cities at the shores of world seas don't necessarily indicate the existence of important trade across these oceans. Frank's conclusion on global trade is that Asia and especially China dominated the global economy. His observation that Europeans had a much less important role in East Asian trade than China is correct. But because he fails to compare trade within Asia to trade within Europe (see for instance p. 184), his conclusion that Europe was peripheral to the world-system is false. In that period Europe and Asia were largely external to each other. If China was central, it was only central to Asia, not the world as a whole. Only the flows of silver to which Frank devotes a whole chapter indicate China's dominance. This chapter on the important monetary connections in the world after the discovery of America is the most convincing part of the book. But the importance of this trade is questionable. The importance of the inflow of luxury consumer goods, not usable in the real economy of everyday life, was limited in Europe. China may have been central in the global economic network, but that network was unimportant - especially when compared to the present (twentieth-century) connections. Europe was perhaps marginal to the pre-1800 global economy, but that global economy was marginal to the parts it very weakly connected. [Page 178] Frank's assertion that Europe and Asia were then, and are now, part of the same unified world-system is problematic on other grounds. Frank makes too little distinction between the worldwide connections of the past and the present. Frank delimits his world-system with an all-or-nothing criterion. The present world-system emerged, according to Frank, when the social development of different parts of the world started influencing each other. This stretches the world-system so much in space and time that it becomes a meaningless concept. If almost all of human history takes place within the same world-system, the explanatory power of the world-system for the worldwide differences in social development is greatly reduced. Frank also ignores the changing nature of worldwide contacts. These have intensified in impact and incidence. These changed from weak incidental, mostly cultural, influences to strong mutual economic relations upon which the everyday functioning of each economy depends. For instance, Frank makes very plausible that the introduction of maize farming from America by way of Europe to China stimulated Chinese economic development from the 17th century onward. But this one-off is hardly comparable to, for instance, the present integration of the automobile industry in which the assembly plants of the global firms use parts produced in many different countries. By heaping all worldwide relations into one world-system one implicitly denies the importance and explanatory power of extending and intensifying relations within the modern world-system. The world is a much more complex and multilayered place than Frank acknowledges. This book review can only outline a better solution where Frank's ideas are integrated with those of Immanuel Wallerstein ("Societal Development, or Development of the World-System," International Sociology, 1986), Fernand Braudel (The Perspective of the World, 1986), and Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall (Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems, 1997). Frank's global history is the starting point. The historic examples of worldwide influences are important and have been too much neglected. Chase-Dunn and Hall make a very useful distinction within this global complex between four different exchange networks: information, prestige goods, political-military power, and bulk goods. The first two have the widest spatial range, while the latter two have the deepest impact. There is also a succession from culture, through politics to the economy. Most social development can be explained from within the last of these networks. When the borders of these four networks converge, then a world-system emerges. For instance Frank's book sketches the shadow of such a world-system in East Asia between 1400 and 1800. Much more recognizable is the European-based world-system as studied by Wallerstein, which emerged after the Middle Ages through the incorporation of the Americas. Only after a second phase of expansion in the nineteenth century did it overwhelm the whole world. Braudel agrees that this European-based world-system has a logic of its own, but this structure also hides a sequence of several different networks. These, which I provisionally label "world-formations," have cores located in different places. Not only their spatial, but also their economic and political, organizations differ within the broad logic of capitalism. During a period of stagnation a new world-formation arises out of the remnants of the old one. Crises mark the beginning of a process of reformation: one coherent world-formation which developed at a leisurely pace is going into decline. At the same time another world-formation is being born amid much hesitation and delay (Braudel, p. 85). These were subsequently centered on Venice, Genoa, Amsterdam, England (London), and the United States. The stumbling rise of East Asia in the last decades is perhaps the beginning of a new world-formation. The parallel Frank draws between the rise of East Asia in the world-system during recent decades and its strong position before 1800 is not only debatable on theoretical grounds, but also on empirical grounds. Frank underpins the dominant position of Asia in general and China in particular in the pre-nineteenth century global economy not only on their presumed centrality in trade, but also by claiming that East Asia's economy was more advanced than Europe's and was developing at a faster rate. Frank's assertion that these societies' technology was more advanced and their manufacturing superior to the Europeans is generally correct, even though his comparison between Europe and Asia is once again unbalanced. For Europe, he stresses that although university knowledge was developing, it lacked links with production. However, his discussion of technology in Asia focusses on the many sophisticated goods they produced. More problematic is his analysis of the development of Asia compared to Europe. He asserts that it was the Asian economies and societies that were developing while Europe was lagging behind. Population figures, which are the only useful global comparative data indicating social and economic development in this period, clearly show, according to Frank, that in "the period from 1400 until 1750 or even 1800 population grew much faster in Asia, and especially in China and India, than in Europe" (page 171). This is one of the few instances in which Frank's evidence can be checked. Frank's own data is augmented by Bairoch, one of the scholars with whom he does not disagree. Because Frank frequently stresses that the Asian share of world population increased, the following figure uses this claim as the basis for comparison. [Page 179]
Source: Frank, p. 168, and P. Bairoch , J. Batou, and P. Chèvre, The Population of European Cities: Data Bank and Short Summary of Results (Genève: Librairie Droz), 1988, p. 297. Frank is wrong to compare Europe as a whole with Asia. Even the staunchest Eurocentrists stress the rise of Western Europe. The figure shows that the regional differences within Asia are quite small compared to the dramatic differences within Europe. The biggest contrast between growth and decline are not found between Europe and Asia, but within Europe. This is evident in the figure, even though the data from Bairoch give much lower population estimates and growth figures for Europe as a whole in that period (see also the table). Especially Southern Europe stagnated, while the United Kingdom rose at a much stronger rate than India or China. So the period of what Frank sees as an "Asian age" in fact a Northwest European age. But by only looking at Europe as a whole, this rise is hidden by the relative decline of Southern Europe. This was however only the case between 1600 and 1750. Only between 1700 and 1750 did the United Kingdom decline relative to Asia. So Frank's assertion that in "the period from 1400 until 1750 or even 1800 population grew much faster in Asia, and especially in China and India, than in Europe" (page 171) is only true for just a part of the period in just a part of Europe. Frank's entire book is based on this kind of selective use of evidence. Frank only looks for confirmation of his thesis. He does not test clear-cut questions against the data, but only uses the information and opinions of others which suit him. All others are ignored. However critical one must be of Frank's arguments, it is an inspiring book to read. If he were correct, we would have to clear all the classics on social development from our bookshelves and replace them with his latest book. Clearly, I don't think that is necessary. I have put it on my shelf just below the classics. His book shows the importance of studying areas not in isolation, but in their developing relations with the rest of the world. Good horizontally-integrative macro history indeed needs to place our European-based world-system in a wider perspective. However, I think that Andre Gunder Frank's argument is only partly right. He is, however, very convinced of the correctness of his book. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table: Changing Shares in World Population (1400 = Index Value of 100)
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